


been left here in the reeds

by celaenos



Category: Peter Pan & Related Fandoms
Genre: Character Study, Gen, One Shot, Post-Neverland
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-01-04
Updated: 2019-01-04
Packaged: 2019-10-04 07:01:05
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 988
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/17299964
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/celaenos/pseuds/celaenos
Summary: Wendy can’t forget; only part of her wants to.





	been left here in the reeds

**Author's Note:**

> iii got no idea what this is my dudes, only that i've got some free time and lots of weird half-formed fic ideas spinning around in my brain. i'm just rolling with it. 
> 
> there are potentially some self-harm triggering moments, just a heads up.

_I was a pirate,_ Wendy thinks. Her mother cries and clings to her. John and Michael are climbing around the room, around Mother and Father, chattering away, words falling excitedly out of their mouths too fast—hardly understandable. They say things like _flying,_ and _fairies,_ and _mermaids,_ and _pirates._

“I was a pirate,” Wendy whispers, into her mother’s shoulder.

“What, dear?” she asks, looking over at Michael as he attempts to show her how to swordfight.

“Nothing,” Wendy says. Her mother looks at her eye. Down to the corner of her lip. Wendy suspects that she knows the kiss is gone. “I’m glad to be home,” she says, voice thick.

Her mother wraps her arms tight around Wendy’s middle, her hands pulling away after a moment.

She doesn’t hug her again for days, weeks, months, Wendy stops counting.

 _They called me Red-Handed-Jill_ , she whispers into her pillow.

…

…

John and Michael acclimate back to life in London quickly.

Too-quickly.

There are boys in London who run around and fight each other and holler in the streets. It doesn’t seem so different, for them.

Girls cannot join them. Wendy tries, once, then twice. Mother catches her—her eyes going down to the corner of Wendy’s mouth and dipping into a frown. Grandmother catches her and yanks her roughly back into the house, grabbing a strap and snapping it against Wendy’s skin.

It’s raw and red when she tugs up her skirts and looks at it in the mirror. It looks like the welts the boys would give each other, Peter would dole out quicker than you could blink, his temper flaring—white-hot and cruel. Wendy pokes at her skin and winces. Peter wouldn’t wince. A pirate wouldn’t wince.

She’s not a pirate anymore. She’s just a girl.

When she walks down for dinner, she exaggerates a limp. Her grandmother’s face pinches as Wendy stares her down, slurping her soup like a commoner. Like a pirate, maybe.

…

…

Michael forgets Neverland.

He talks of pirates and fairies and mermaids for a few weeks, and then he begins chattering excitedly about dodgeball and the boys in his new nursery and then he stops talking about Neverland altogether.

John remembers, but he seems to want to forget.

He snaps whenever Wendy mentions the Lost Boys or Tinkerbell. He will discuss Peter but only sometimes, when he’s nearly asleep and Wendy insists. His friends take precedence. He begins going to a club after school that doesn’t allow girls.

Wendy pinches at the skin on her thigh where Grandmother smacked her until it goes pink again. She only flinches the first time.

Wendy can’t forget; only part of her wants to.

…

…

There is a pack of girls at her school that reminds her of the mermaids.

Wendy walks past and they chitter, hands going up and covering their mouths, but not all the way. They want her to see. That’s the point.

They’re just girls, like her. They’re not powerful, they don’t have fins or speed or charm. They just have giggles. Wendy walks over and stands before them, remembers the way the mermaids tugged at her nightgown, soaking her clothes and pulling, pulling until Peter came. She walks up to the prettiest girl and remembers Peter’s quick-cruel temper and slaps her across the face.

It blooms pink, like her thigh.

She screams and Wendy smiles, walking away without a single word.

Mother and Father are furious. She has to write five hundred words on lady-like civility every day after school for an entire week. Wendy sits inside the cold room and writes about mermaids. Her teacher is unimpressed. Father even more so.

The girls never bother her again, though.

…

…

Mother shuffles Wendy into her own room the second night they come home. She’s too old for the nursery, had been, before they left. Her new bedroom window latch is impossible to push open—perhaps by design. Wendy fights with it regularly, stubbornly shoving it open on nights that Mother is making her angry.

Being in her own room is strange. She’s spent her whole life that she can remember sharing with John and Michael. Then she shared with the Lost Boys and Tink. She’s never been on her own before. The room is too quiet. Wendy takes to humming quietly to herself, no tune that she can remember ever knowing the words to; it’s melancholy. It makes her think of Peter and Hook and Neverland, though she doesn’t know quite why. Other than _everything_ makes her think of Neverland, now.

One night in the middle of winter, Wendy wakes in the middle of the night. She thinks perhaps someone is there, and sits up staring quietly, looking for shadows. No one is there, though. When Wendy shifts, she gasps, shoving the covers off her body and looking down at her sheets. Stained red.

The reason for waking, then.

Wendy spends a few terrifying seconds thinking she is about to die, before she remembers a conversation with Grandmother that had made no sense, months ago. A warning that helped exactly nothing, dancing around words like they were vile. Once she is sure that her breath is staying inside of her body, Wendy shifts and crawls out of bed. She washes herself with the basin, shivering in the dead of night. The water has long since gone cold. Wendy remembers blood dripping red in Neverland. Out of noses, pirates’ skin, dead fishes about to be cooked up for dinner—nothing quite like this.

Wendy tugs her sheets off the bed, her stomach hurts and her head hurts worse. The window is open. No wonder the whole room is so cold. Wendy walks to the window and stares up at the sky. It’s a cloudy night, hardly any stars to be seen at all. Wendy stands there, feeling swollen, raw, miserable, and looks up for one in particular. It’s nowhere to be found.

She yanks the window closed.


End file.
